COVERING TWO YEARS - Weldon Kees Poems

COVERING TWO YEARSThis nothingness that feeds upon itself:Pencils that turn to water in the hand,Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air,Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass,Blank sheets of paper that reflect the worldWhitened the world that I was silenced by.

There were two years of that. Slowly,Whatever splits, dissevers, cuts, cracks, ravels, or dividesTo bring me to that diet of corrossion, burnedAnd flickered to its terminal. - Now in an older handI write my name. Now with a voice grown unfamiliar,I speak to silences of altered rooms,Shaken by knowledge of recurrence and return.